Minnesota’s literary community is elated that Louise Erdrich and William Alexander are the first writers from this state to win National Book Awards in the same year. The prestigious awards were announced Wednesday, Nov. 14, in New York.

Alexander, 36, won in the young people’s literature category for his debut fantasy novel, “Goblin Secrets.”

Erdrich, 58, won for her 14th novel, “The Round House,” after being nominated twice before in other categories. Her coming-of-age story about an Indian teen who wants to avenge a savage attack on his mother on a North Dakota reservation has also been named Amazon’s best book of the year.

“I’m still so excited I can’t stand it,” Erdrich said during a phone coversation Thursday, Nov. 15, from the airport where she was waiting for a flight to Minneapolis.

“This award is a huge gesture of affirmation for me,” Erdrich said. “I have been writing since I was in my late teens, sometimes wondering whether I could continue. I was the only woman nominated in the fiction category and I was very conscious of that.”

“Junot is a lovely man. He told me he wanted me to win,” Erdrich said.

Thanks to her “assortment of daughters,” Erdrich had someone to “hold my hand and hand me Tums” before the awards gala. When her name was called, she almost forgot she had to walk to the stage to accept the bronze award, which she said is so heavy she wasn’t sure it would make it through airport security.

That award, fashioned to look like a swirled sheaf of papers with a book, will be placed in Erdrich’s Minneapolis bookstore, Birchbark Books, where a staffer said there were 10 online purchase requests for “The Round House” before the store opened Thursday.

Erdrich, a member of the North Dakota Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians, says she wrote “The Round House” as a suspense novel so people would read it. But she hopes it will draw attention to the “immense suffering in Indian country” caused by issues surrounding law enforcement and sovereignty on reservations.

“I feel this book is about an issue so much larger than me, and that I had a gift of a narrator who could tell the story more eloquently than I could,” she said. “It feels beyond me. It’s a big honor for North Dakota, Minnesota and the Turtle Mountain Chippewa nation.”

Alexander, who teaches at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, called his win “surreal and fantastic” and cheerfully admitted Thursday he hadn’t expect to win and has no idea why he did. He was accompanied to New York by his wife, Alice, and their 2-week-old daughter, Iris (who did not attend the gala).

His new book, a companion to “Goblin Secrets,” will be published in March.

David Enyeart, assistant manager at Common Good Books in St. Paul, worked with Alexander at Magers & Quinn bookstore in Minneapolis. He recalls Alexander taking his writing very seriously.

“These wins show how broad and deep our literary community is,” Enyeart said, pointing out that Erdrich is an established writer, while Alexander represents the next generation.

“Besides having a lot of writers who support and critique one another, we’ve got institutions like the Loft, bookstores that host readings, media that covers books and interested readers,” Enyeart said. “When all this comes together, it gives us National Book Award winners. We know we have a vibrant literary community and now the rest of the nation is seeing it too.”

Claire Kirch can speak to that national perspective as Duluth-based Midwest correspondent for Publishers Weekly magazine.

“We’re known as a hub of literary publishing in the book world, and now Minnesota will be fully appreciated as a place where writers are producing incredible works,” she said.

Minnesotan Pete Hautman, who won a 2004 National Book Award in the young people’s category for “Godless,” says he’s a “numbers guy” who’s impressed with the how many writers call Minnesota home.

He recalled going to two parties last week, one of which drew about 50 writers of young adult literature, the other drew a dozen different writers. He’s a member of a Facebook group with some 60 participants who are “mostly younger and came out of the Loft or Hamline’s MFA writing for children and young adults program.”

Hautman sees awards as a way for readers to learn about authors: “I’d never heard of William Alexander, but now I’m certainly going to read his book.”

Mary Ann joined the Dispatch-Pioneer Press in 1961 when there were two papers. She has been a fashion writer, a women's columnist and the women's department editor who brought "society" pages into the 20th century. She was named book editor in 1983, just when the local literary community exploded. She has won the Minnesota Book Awards Kay Sexton Award, a Page One Award and YWCA Leader Lunch Award. She retired in 2001 and works part time. A graduate of Macalester College, she lives on St. Paul's West Side in a money-sucking Victorian house with assorted old animals.

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